LG Q6 Review – Good Display, Nothing Else

LG Q6 smartphone with FullVision Display was launched in India priced at Rs. 14,990 on August second week. The 3GB RAM, 32GB variant is made available in the country. It will be offered in Astro Black, Ice Platinum, and Terra Gold colors. Here we are doing the full review of the LG Q6 smartphone. It is available to purchase for Rs. 14,990 from Amazon India. We have the black one up for review.

Build and Design

Main highlights of this smartphone are the bezel less design, and the 18:9 full vision display. LG Q6 feels solid and comfortable in hand. It has an ultra-strong 7000 series aluminium frame and comes with unibody design. LG used high quality material to build the Q6, so that it feels more premium than a budget smartphone. In addition, the LG Q6 also passed Military-grade MIL-STD 810G tests which ensures build quality. The display has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. As it is designed as a mid-level smartphone, there is no IP68 certification for dust and water resistance.

It is not a paper thin, light weight smartphone, LG usually doesn’t make slim phones. LG Q6 is 8.1 mm thick and it weighs 149 grams. The display with slim bezels take over 80 percent of the its front side, and it gives this budget smartphone a premium look. It comes with the unusual 18:9 aspect ratio, which allows the Q6 to provide more display real estate without going wider and uncomfortable to hold. If the LG Q6 came with large bezels, it would have been larger than any other 5.5-inch smartphones in the market. It has a smaller footprint than a 5-inch smartphone.

1 of 2

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 vs LG Q6 vs Xiaomi Mi3

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 vs LG Q6 vs Xiaomi Mi3

Display

The 5.5-inch full HD+ 18:9 Full Vision display is good, but has issues. Under direct sunlight the visibility is not very good. The light sensor works very well in detecting ambient light changes and is able to push the screen brightness all the way up to the maximum. Viewing angles, touch sensitivity and color reproduction seems to be good. The display has a pixel density of 442ppi, which makes the whole display sharp and crisp. The display has rounded corners

Screen Visibility Under Direct Sunlight

While playing videos, there are two black bars on either side of the screen. Because most videos have an aspect ratio of 16:9, which is being used by most of the smartphones in the world. Most of the Games and applications doesn’t have this issue, web browsing is also possible by utilizing the whole screen.

Physical Overview

The rear panel is plastic and it is a fingerprint magnet, it is prone to scratches as well. But its frame is metal. This smartphone can handle one or two drops but it will defiantly leave a mark.

The LG Q6 has the power button on the right side, while the volume rockers and slots of two SIM card and MicroSD card are on the left. It comes with a Micro USB 2.0 port for charging and data syncing and comes with a mono speaker on the back panel. The LG Q6 has dedicated SIM and microSD card slots, instead of the hybrid SIM slot which can be seen commonly in today’s smartphones. The dedicated slot allows users to expand storage without compromising a SIM slot. Below the display is the LG logo with no capacitive buttons, as it has on-screen touch buttons.

1 of 5

SIM and MicroSD card Slots

Volume Rockers

Front 5MP Camera and Earpiece

13MP Rear Camera with LED Flash

Secondary Noise Cancellation Microphone

Software

The LG Q6 comes with LG’s own UI on top of Android 7.1.1 Nougat, which allows the users to run apps in two perfectly square windows side by side, which uses Android Nougat’s split-screen multitasking capabilities. Update to Android Orio is promised by LG.

OS InterfaceOS Interface

LG’s UI is not the best looking, but it is well optimized and we didn’t face and lag or bugs. This UI doesn’t have an app drawer. To add the app drawer feature You can either use the pre-installed EasyHome theme or download and install the Home 4.0 launcher from its app store. or install a third part launcher from play store.

Home Screen

Other Features

LG should have included a fingerprint scanner in the Q6 just like all other smartphones in this price segment. The facial recognition feature is not as safe as the fingerprint scanner.

The face unlock feature will work very well only in good lighting conditions. It takes a second or more to unlock the device, but one can easily cheat the Q6 by showing a photograph of the user in front of the phone. There is an option to secure this feature furthermore, but after that it takes more than three seconds to unlock the device. If you have the LG Q6, use the PIN or pattern lock, which is way more secure and fast.

Advanced Face Recognition Option

The default app was able to play high bit-rate full HD video without any issues, but it failed to play a 4K videos.

Connectivity

It has support for 4G VoLTE and USB OTG. The phone also has a magnetic sensor and gyroscope so you can use the phone with VR headsets. The notification LED feature is missing. WIFI is not 5Ghz AC, it is just the 2.4Ghz with support for 802.11 b/g/n standards. It will be more than enough to access the internet.

The GPS module struggles to pick up signal indoors, but outside it gets signal with an accuracy of 6 meters, which is very good. Features like Double-tap-to-wake and using the volume up and down buttons to activate the camera or the note pad are really useful.

Network Connectivity and Voice call

The voice quality during calls was excellent, we tested in 2G, 3G and 4GB networks. Jio SIM works well with this smartphone and there is support for 4G VoLTE calls. The ear piece can get very loud, and it is clear. In handsfree mode microphone echoes a little bit, but not a big issue.

Performance

The LG Q6 is powered by a 1.4GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor coupled with Adreno 505 GPU and 3GB of RAM. It comes with 32GB of internal storage, and can also support MicroSD cards up to 256GB using the dedicated microSD card slot. It is possible to move apps on to external storage. LG should have given at least Snapdragon 625 just like other smartphones in this price segment. The similarly priced Moto G5 Plus and lesser priced Redmi Note 4 comes with Snapdragon 625.

That means LG Q6 is prone to some lag and stutter during extended usage. Opening too many apps or too many tabs in the Chrome browser can cause performance issues. Games like Asphalt 8 and Modern combat 5 didn’t had any issues. Asphalt 8 in high settings felt like to have some frame drops. 6:35 The Snapdragon 435 processor doesn’t have the muscles to play demanding 3D games.

Here is the AnTuTu benchmark results, LG Q6 has the lowest score in this group. Even the Nokia 6 with the same Snapdragon 435 and 3GB RAM has better score.

1 of 5

PCMark Work 2.0 Battery Life

GeekBench MultiCore

GeekBench Single Core

3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited

AnTuTu

LG Q6 struggled to run the 3D Mark benchmarks, and many times the app hesitated to start and crashed. As you can see the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 and the Moto G5 Plus with the Snapdragon 625 chipset scores the best. In Geekbench Single core test, the LG Q6 and Nokia 6 has almost the same results. But the Geekbench Mutlicore result shows the Nokia 6 has better performance to offer. Just like in all other benchmarks, the moto G5 Plus and Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 scores the best even in battery life. The phone also has a tendency to get warm over extended period of gameplay, but it is not too much.

1 of 4

Playing Asphalt 8 for just 10 minutes makes the phone’s metal frame really hot, which is not such a good sign.

CPU-Z Details

1 of 6

Battery

The included 3000mah battery can give a full day backup on moderate usage. But there is no support for fast charging and the provided charger is not powerful enough to charge the battery well in short period of time. We played a HD video in loop for 90 minutes and it took 18% battery life.

It can last a full day without WiFi, minimum brightness and moderate usage. Under full load in maximum brightness, for example while gaming, you will get 4 hours and a few minutes of battery life. With medium to heavy usage, you can get 12-23 hours of battery life.

30 minutes of charging gives around 17% of charge from 0%. It takes more than one hour to charge up to 50 percent. Around 2 hours and 30 minutes is needed to get fully charged from fully drained out stage, which is too long when compared with other smartphones in this segment with fast charging feature.

Camera

The 13MP rear camera with single LED flash can capture clear photos under good lighting conditions. Low light photos are prone to noise even with flash. The camera app has an option to record videos in 18:9 aspect ratio, but only in HD, not full HD. Same is applicable for photos, if you want to capture images in full screen mode, it will get cropped. To exploit all the pixels of the 13-megapixel sensors, users will have to choose the 4:3 image ratio. The DSLR like viewfinder looks fancy, but it fails to focus some time and results if blurry images. Images shot under low light conditions have lots of noise in it. In this price segment, there is only one smartphone with better camera, the Moto G5 Plus.

1 of 11

LG Q6 Rear Camera

LG Q6 Rear Camera (auto) HDR

LG Q6 Rear Camera (auto) HDR

LG Q6 Rear Camera

LG Q6 Rear Camera

LG Q6 Rear Camera

LG Q6 Rear Camera (auto) HDR

LG Q6 Rear Camera (auto) HDR

LG Q6 Rear Camera

LG Q6 Rear Camera (auto) HDR

The 13 megapixel rear camera is able to capture really good image sin bright conditions. It has good exposure and details. Front camera is good only in daylight, indoors it is not usable. It can record full HD videos in 30 frames per second. There is no optical image stabilization, but the electronic image stabilization (EIS) actually works to reduce the shake in videos.

1 of 3

Front Camera (auto) HDR - Wide Angle

Front Camera (auto) HDR

Front Camera (auto) HDR

The 5-megapixel front camera has a 100-degree wide-angle option, which is very useful. Front camera is average in quality. It struggles when we try to capture images against direct light, Edges are quickly pixelated also the colour reproduction, and sharpness suffer.

Camera InterfaceLG Q6 Camera Settings

Conclusion

The LG Q6 does have flagship looks in a budget. If you want a comfortable smartphone with premium looks, and good build quality, go for the LG Q6. Under Rs. 15,000, the 18:9 Full Vision display is really good. It is not as powerful as many other smartphones in the same price segment. If you like the display, buy it. If you want the same display with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, wait few more days, LG might launch the Q6+ with 4GB RAM in September. If you want more performance and battery life, go for Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 or Moto G5 Plus or G5S Plus.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Design

8

Display

8

Software

8.5

Performance

7

Battery Life

7.5

Camera

7.5

Value For Money

7

SUMMARY

The LG Q6 does have flagship looks in a budget. If you want a comfortable smartphone with premium looks, and good build quality, go for the LG Q6. Under Rs. 15,000, the 18:9 Full Vision display is really good.